Life returns to normal, with the possible exception of Katniss being even quieter than usual. Lost in thought one day in the middle of a painting on what is shaping up to be a beautiful early-spring afternoon, I contemplate this. Haymitch and I, I suspect, are more adept at seeing the long-range view: him because he's had the experience to shed the impatience of youth, and me because I went from waiting for Katniss to notice me to waiting to either escape or be killed by two arenas and then the Capitol's torturers, which is a comparative lot of my short life spent waiting, with no other options. Katniss is accustomed to the short-range view…it's been yet one more way she's adapted to survive. Just to get to the next day, and then begin all over again, finding food, forgiving her mother, saving herself, saving me. I can see a future; often it seems as though she can't, or can't tolerate it, or doesn't believe in it. She treats many of her encounters as though they might be her last. It's like this when Johanna leaves. She answers people in short, clipped sentences. Haymitch gives her a wide berth. "She needs time," he says. His eyes are sober and strangely faraway when he says it. I know this, but I ask him anyways.

"What do you know that I don't?"

He laughs shortly and mumbles. "All kinds of useful things…that's what makes me mentor."

I sigh and wait. That's all you can do with him, sometimes.

He finally answers me. "She needs friends, Peeta. You're not a friend. She misses company."

This makes me defensive immediately. "I'm her friend!"

"You're her lover. That's not the same." When he sees the look on my face, he hastens, "Look, I'm not comparing. It's likely because of that you know morethan most people about how she operates. But you are never going to be everything."

"Gale was everything," I mutter. It never seemed like she wanted friends back then. But this makes me sound childish and I regret it as soon as it comes out of my mouth.

"Prim was everything," he says sharply, like I'm missing the point entirely. "In case you've forgotten, Gale was probably instrumental in her death. When was the last time you heard her talk about him?"

I consider this. It has been a long time. She talks about Johanna. Occasionally, we talk together about Delly, but Katniss will never be close with her the way she's been with others. Delly went through the bombing and the rebuilding, it's true, but she'll never know what the rest of us know. One more injustice we can charge the Gamemakers with is separating us from the rest of the world forever, and creating an Us and Them even amongst ourselves. I understand why so many of the Victors knew each other and were friends. A stab touches my heart at the thought of Finnick, who saved my life….all our lives…and Katniss' sanity. What a thoughtless waste.

"Do you think she'll talk to him again?" I ask, my toe prodding the ashes in his empty fireplace. I hauled him over some game and some greens from her, that morning, because she'd left early, before I was even really conscious. For the first few days, she dragged her feet going into the woods, and I knew why, but I guess she's settled back into a routine now. I trust Haymitch's intuition. But he sighs immediately, as though this question is one at the forefront of his own mind.

"That's the question of the day," he says to me. He's being maddeningly cryptic, but again, I hold my tongue. This information is worth waiting for. He answers me without a word, though, and pulls an envelope from an inner pocket on his vest. When he hands it to me, I don't even need to look at it to know what it is. This has come hard on the heels of both Johanna's visit and her prognostication: the reality is that we've gone longer than I expected without word from the Capitol. I'm not persuaded by the temporary absence that they've finished their business with us; I've known for a long time that they're simply on a new timeframe, have other things to busy themselves with, and this has bought us time. Not forever. Clearly. Because when I glance at the envelope resignedly, it reads, in a hard, confident masculine hand:

Katniss Everdeen

#9, Victor's Village

District 12

Panem

But of course, this is only half. The other half bears Gale's return address. I notice in passing that the street he lives on, which I remember from our nightmarish run through the Capitol, is near Snow's mansion—they've been installed in the inner circle of the city. I suddenly feel overwhelmed with tiredness. I don't want to deal with this. We've been home for only seven months…Katniss for a little longer, since it took them some time to bring me back enough that I could be trusted more or less on my own, but it suddenly feels like no time at all.

"She's going to have your head, Haymitch. This has her name on it."

"I'll put it back. I just thought you should have a heads-up." I'm grateful for this. There's no telling what her reaction to this will be—her emotions are erratic, volatile. She takes—or is supposed to be taking—medication to help her readjust, but I haven't noticed much difference in this. She's slowly becoming more measured in her downswings, as they're fewer now and less debilitating, but her emotions in general are still ever-shifting. Her last phone call with her doctor did not end well. She didn't talk about it, but I suspect he's dissatisfied with how their conversations are going, or he's not achieving his desired outcome, which, I think a little cynically, might be to flatten her out even beyond herself.

"What are we going to do?"

"We?" He snorts. "I don't see where we come in."

"What do you think he wants?"

"What do you think he wants?" he snaps back. My question is stupid. More than likely, Gale's asking, either on his own behalf, on someone else's, or both, that she come out to see them, or that they come here to see her. I'm pettily angry with him. She's just come around to me in the past few months, and under the anger is fear that I'll begin to lose her again—maybe not to him now, but to him in the past. To her memories.

"Think she'll go?" I'm hoping he says not a chance.

"Eventually," he says. This is unhelpful, because I knew it already.

"Think she'll go now?" I ask. I hate how needy I sound to myself.

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Haymitch mumbles under his breath, and I notice his eyes shift over my shoulder. I turn, dread in the pit of my stomach. Katniss, of course, is standing in the doorway, with fire in her eyes. She's back far too early, so she must have forgotten something. Which is bad luck for everyone, including her, at the moment.

"Whatis that?" she asks in a dangerous voice. Haymitch must understand the meaning of "screwed," because he hands it to her. A normal person would try to justify themselves now, but Haymitch, not being a normal person, merely spins a chair around and sits with his arms on the back of it, crossed. He reaches for the bottle of white liquor on the table and takes a long pull from it.

"I wouldn't go yet if I were you," he says, as though she's solicited his advice, but I'm the one who recognizes this as a mistake. Telling Katniss not to do anything is an excellent way of making her rethink it.

"Why…do you….have my mail…Haymitch?" she asks slowly and deliberately. Her voice whips like a snake.

"Why don't you open it?" he asks her, ignoring the question, "That way, we can get it all over with."

"Keep your goddamn hands off my things!" she explodes. Strands of hair are loose from her braid but even they don't help to soften her face. Her features seem carved in stone. Her eyes are bottomless as he hands it to her and she notices the return address. He gets off the hook, because I see her visibly deflate. Her eyes have completely ignored my presence, and now they're fixated on the address.

Now everything is going to change, I think resentfully.

I think for a moment she's going to just tear it, throw it away, just pretend it never happened. But she can't, as I wouldn't be able to. She shoves it into her back pocket and wipes her hands on her dirty pants, as though they're defiled by touching it. All three of us stand and stare at each other for a moment. Haymitch takes another drink. I'm tense, and it's all I can do not to grab that bottle and fling it out the window. I need him, and I need him sober, because I don't know what to do now.

Then she whirls, and is gone, and I don't think before I go after her; it's just automatic. She's moving fast, not back towards the woods, but towards her house. I'm afraid for her to be alone. Selfishly, I'm afraid to be alone, too, for different reasons.

"Katniss!" I call out. She has size on her side, and I think she's going to get away after all, get into the house and bolt the door against me, Haymitch, the world. She keeps trying to shut it out, but what she really needs to shut out is herself, and she can't.

"Katniss!" I plead. "Talk to me!" And to my amazement, she stops. She's breathing heavily. She turns slowly, and I can actually see the steely resolve and vulnerability warring in her eyes.

"I need two things from you," she says, fighting to keep her voice even.

"Okay," I agree immediately. We're still standing ten feet apart but, like interacting with a wild animal, I stay where I am.

She pulls the envelope from her back pocket and flings it on the ground between us. "I need you to take that. And don't give it back right now. You'll know when."

I stoop and pick it up, tuck it carefully into my back pocket. "Alright."

"Also, I need something to do, now."

"You're not hunting?" I ask carefully. She doesn't answer, just stands looking up at me, waiting. I'm not the one who gets to ask the questions today.

"Okay," I say, "Come on." This is my plan today anyways, and no one will question her attendance…in fact, they'll be grateful for it. I don't try to touch her, and she doesn't try to touch me, she simply falls in line behind me as I turn down the path to town. We're quiet. She has told me what she needs. All I can do is hope she'll continue to do so. I take her, of course, to my job site. The bakery is half up now, heavy stones raised and mortared to build walls. It's bigger than my old one, and it's arranged differently, for which I'm grateful. The crew still has to finish the frame, put in windows, haul in an oven. Different crews are working on different shops and buildings around town, 5 or 6 each on a crew. Luceid shakes her hand firmly, of course knowing who she is. Katniss is little, but she's strong. The work is time-consuming, tiring, and for me, at least, it helps clear my mind in its repetition. I introduce her to the men on my team, and she begins to work with me building a chimney, scaling the stones of the escalating walls to add bricks to it as it gets above our heads. She scales the walls easily and without fear. She works silently, but fast, her hands growing dirty and rough. Together, we build what will be my chimney. The work suits her, I can tell. But when the rest of us stop for lunch, she works on, smoothing mortar and clearing smaller rubble away. We work through the day. The extra person makes a difference. When the sun begins to move towards the west, Luceid dismisses us, but he tells her clearly that she's welcome back anytime, and thanks her. She smiles for the first time all day.

On the walk back home, she's quiet again, speaking only two words to me: "Thank you."
"You're welcome," I say softly. I expect her to veer off towards her house again and I'm trying to work out inside my head what I should do when she does, but to my surprise, it's mine that she turns to. After we hang our coats, she slips into the living room and I find her there a few minutes later, curled in a ball on the couch, her head on the arm. I pull wood from the pile and start a fire for her, and then move away into the kitchen, though I leave the door between the two open so I can hear her. I toast bread with butter, stuff it with cheese and the last of the bacon, pour out iced tea from the fridge, and, when it's all finished, bring it to her on a plate. When I re-enter the room, she's moved to the floor in front of the fire. Her arms are curled around her body, hugging it, as though she can't get warm. I pull a throw off the couch and wrap it around her shoulders, and kneel down to place the plate beside her. She looks up at me, and in that naked look, I can tell that she doesn't know what to do now, either. She's spent so long trying to erase him, because remembering him requires her to remember other people, complexity, loss.

"You have to eat something," I say gently to her.

She turns back to the fire. "He's going to want me to go back."

"I know," I say.

She rubs her eyes with her knuckles, like a child, and suddenly, I don't have the will to restrain myself, whatever the reaction may be. I sit behind her and wrap her in my arms, pull her back against my chest, breathe in her hair. She sighs, and it's an adult sigh, the sigh of someone who has no one to tell her what to do and is burdened with making impossible decisions. But she picks up the sandwich and takes a bite, which is something. She holds it out to inspect it. "It's good," she says, dully. Obediently, she eats most of it. I stroke her hair lightly as she eats, untangling the ends of her braid with my fingers. It's a mark of how far we've come that she doesn't resist it.

"Was it okay, today?" I ask. She nods. "Better," she says. I don't know better than what, nor do I ask.

"Come shower with me," I implore her. She doesn't resist, but when we reach the top of the stairs and I stop to take off my shoes, I hear a bath begin to run, not a shower. When I enter the room, she's sitting on the side of the bathtub, still clothed, staring at her feet. She used to get into funks like this a few months back. As the bath fills, I light candles and turn off the harsh overhead light. I miss her hands on me, my hands on her, but we undress ourselves. Even covered in dust and grime and sweat, she's still beautiful. When she undoes her braid and shakes her hair out, it's wavy. I slide into the hot water and exhale. It feels good, and this bath is big. She runs her fingers through the water as though she doesn't recognize it. I take her hand and she steps in, and lies back against me. My hands take hers, and I wind my fingers in and hold onto her so she doesn't float away from me.

"Would you go?" she says suddenly, catching me off guard. "If you were me?"

I think about this carefully before answering. "If I thought I could, then I would go. But I wouldn't promise for how long."

She's quiet for a minute again. The crease where her shoulder meets her neck, one of my favorite spots, shimmers in the flickering candlelight, and it's all I can do not to lean in, try to make us both forget all about it, reassure myself that she's here with me, not in the Capitol with Gale.

She surprises me a second time with her follow-up question. "If I go, will you go with me?"

I blink. I'd assumed she'd want to go alone, unless they'd invited me, and even then, that she might ask me not to, not the first time she sees him again in so long. I wouldn't have resisted. I can't stop her from doing what she needs to do, and I can't intervene, either. I even feel my hands tied on the issue of bringing us up at all, as I can't find a way to get the reassurance I need without threatening her independence. Katniss can be gentled into love, with time and patience, but she can't be pushed. But it turns out that I don't have to do either, because she's asking.

"If you want me," I tell her. The choice of words is deliberate. I don't say need.

"I want you," she says. Her neck cranes around so she can look at me when she says it.

Now I ask, because I need to know. "Because you can't do it alone?"

"Because I don't want to," she says.

"Tell me again."

"I want you," she says, and it makes a tingle shoot down my spine. The words are loaded. Her mouth is hovering just below mine and I want to take it, have to take it, but one more thing slips out of my traitorous lips.

"Even though you'll be with Gale?"

"I'll be seeing Gale. I won't be with him," she says, and then I can't help it, and I cup her head in one hand as I lean down and kiss her, gently. She kisses back and I'm glad. I kiss her again. I can't help it. I stop myself from pushing it, though, and reach for the soap as she turns, to wash her hair. We shower off to finish, and I dry her hair and wrap her in a towel. I'm feeling protective, possessive, and she's letting me, probably because she's too mentally exhausted to fight it. When I look into the mirror, my face above her shoulder, I have only a minute to see us together and think how wonderful it is, my light features contrasting with her olive skin and that halo of long, dark hair.

I'm not surprised that she falls asleep quickly in my arms, because just the sight of that letter must seem exhausting, not even counting all the work her body did today, but I'm surprised that I do, too. My muscles still ache a little from the physical labor of the day, but our feet are wound together, and it's hard for me to remember the difficulties, when she's breathing deeply and quietly against me.

In the middle of the night, I feel a feathery touch against my collarbone, and I begin to drift towards the surface.

"Are you okay? What's wrong?" I ask automatically, half-asleep, before I can even see anything in the dark. She doesn't answer. It takes me a bit to realize the feathers are kisses. The sky is still totally dark, which means we haven't slept for that long. The kisses trail down one side to the hollow in the center, which makes me shiver, and then up the other. She shifts lower and moves her warm mouth up the side of my neck, wanders to my ear, and kisses along the ridge. I'm fully awake by now. I groan softly and I feel my cock slowly begin to twitch up, hopeful. This only happens a few times a week, which is never enough for me, but more than I ever thought I'd get. Usually by the time it happens I'm pent-up, as now. I feel her hand stray and wrap around me as I get harder. I inhale sharply as she grips me, strokes steadily, slowly, the way I like. Her mouth finds mine in the dark and she bites my lower lip gently, sucks it in. I breathe her name into her mouth like a sigh. My hands slide down her back, over the soft curves that began to fill in once we came back, move down to cup her ass. Her hair tickles my chest as she nuzzles me, and I can feel her breathing me in. Pheromones, I think dreamily, that's what those are called. It means the smell of a person, their body, without anything masking it. It's the way Katniss smells when our touchings and rubbings make her warm and wet and sweaty. It's how she tastes, too. It feels like a dream as she kisses down my chest, her lips following the subtle indentations of muscles and bones. Her teeth catch on a nipple and I groan. Her mouth finds me in the dark and my hands bury themselves in her hair. She balances on strong thighs to free her hands, stroking gently down my sides along my hips. She's slow, deliberate. I find myself pushing up into her mouth but she pulls back, teasingly. Sweat beads on my skin like dew as I struggle against that great crashing need for her, that need to consume and be consumed. Sex may yet become old hat to us, but as of now it's new, a novelty, and every touch is treated as though it might be the last.

She suckles at the crown of my cock, lapping up the steady drip and purring, and then slowly, inch by inch, takes me deeper into her mouth. I feel her mouth inching and it makes me dizzy, the amount of blood that rushes from my head and into that heat. And slowly, slowly, she passes where she's been before, I feel her take me deeper. Her throat constricts around me and I hold my breath so I don't thrust upwards. My heart stops when I feel her nose nuzzle against the blond down at the base of me. She stops and stays for a minute, and I move my hand to my mouth and bite down to keep from crying out. Then she draws back, moving back and forth, finding her rhythm. She won't let me come, though, and when she feels the muscles in my stomach begin to tremble beneath her hands, she withdraws. I can see my cock glistening in the tiny bit of light that filters through the curtains behind her. Before I can stop myself, I sit up, scoop her off her haunches with one arm, flip her under me, reach down. She's slick and hot and ready, pushing her hips up to meet me as my mouth crashes down on hers. My kisses are hot and openmouthed and desperate, forceful, possessive. We breathe through each other or not at all. Her hand locks behind my neck and keeps me tight to her. I can feel the strength in those archers' fingers, tugging at my hair. My fingers slide in all that wetness. Katniss can never hide her pleasure; it laughs at her attempts to be stoic. My fingers seek her entrance and I'm not disappointed. She gasps when I find my mark, push them in deep, curl them up the way she likes. She whispers her affirmation into my mouth. We're covered in sweat, and her tongue, like a cat's, comes up delicately and draws along my jawline, tasting the salt, letting it drip into her mouth. She groans. I can feel her nipples pushing against me between us, reach over and pinch one, hard, tug it out from her. She puts her hand under her own breast and offers it up to me herself as I lean down to use my teeth.

When I suck the tight little nub into my mouth and bite, it's not gently. I feel half-crazy with lust for her now that she's woken me and played with me and lain back for me to have all to myself. She mews a soft, satisfied sound and I know I'm still free to play rough. My mouth stays where it is as I pump her with my fingers, not hard the way she wants but slow, tantalizing, making her suffer as she made me. My other hand snakes up and caresses the back of her neck as she arches, eyes closed. Then my fingers find their place and I wrap a handful of that silky hair around my fingers and pull, hard, jerking her head back and holding her that way. She cries my name into the air and I move to her other breast, biting down, drawing roughly at it, making sure she'll be sore in the morning. In that moment I feel that fierce dominance that's not in my nature, the counterpart to her surrender. I want her to remember, in the morning, I want her body to remember. My hand moves from under her and she moans softly in protest. My fingers find her mouth and now that I know what she can take, I part her lips with them and push them in to the hilt. She sucks at them like she did my cock, working her tongue in between them. My eyes roll back in my head at the thought of where I am right now. As I rest atop her, she licks her lips and I can see her eyes shining, luminous and full of desire, up at me as I roll her nipple in my fingers again, using my fingernails. My cock is throbbing in earnest now, and it's settled between her thighs against all that wetness. I can't help but shift, see how it feels just to slide against her as we rub together, and the feeling is otherworldly, makes all else seem tawdry and cheap.

"Katniss," I pant, burying my face in her neck as her legs come up and wrap around the backs of my knees, "I'm ready. Please." In that moment, I do feel ready, or my body does, or I don't know. I can't tell. Nothing makes sense except this body under me, this lightning coiled in my belly. She reaches down and takes me in her hand again, and feels for herself, slowly rubbing just my head against her most sensitive places. She sighs softly. I can feel that she's trembling. We both are. If I could think, I would think this is the moment. Shit, I'll never last…

"You're not ready," she says softly to my hair. Her words and her hand don't match and my brain can't process both at the same time. When I move my hand to hers and push them both down on my cock, lower…she says it again.

"You're not ready, Peeta." It's my name that gets me this time. I stop, panting, trying to focus. "What?"

"It's Gale," she says softly, and for a second I can almost feel my heart breaking, as I think that she's been thinking of Gale the whole time. But as soon as the thought comes, I can discard it, because I know her body, and I believe in my heart that it would have responded differently if she had been. That I would have felt the lack of familiarity. "What?" I ask again, dazed. She tips her mouth up to mine and coaxes it down. She's still loving me, even as she talks. "Mmm," she murmurs contentedly. I'm confused.

"You're reacting to Gale writing," she says. "But you don't have to. Don't you see?" I don't. I'm not ready? Only a few weeks ago, it was me telling her the same thing. I'm not hurt by it, but I'm bewildered, and my cock throbs painfully. Embarrassingly, I'm shifting around like a little kid who has to use the bathroom. Because I'm so tempted, so close, I shift off her.

"Finish first," she whispers, and her mouth moves over to my neck as her hand closes mine around my cock. I'm too keyed up to protest, though disappointment floods me. She moves my other hand to her, though, and I'm not coordinated enough to work both of us at once, but it must be better than nothing, because I feel her mouth stop and start on my neck the way it does when she's too turned on to focus. My orgasm quickens. As soon as she hears my breath hitch, she slides down beside me and in a flash, I'm coming, just as her lips move my fingers away and close around the head to catch it. My toes curl up as she drinks me in, making those soft sounds. The tip of her tongue probes at the tip, freeing the last droplets. I'm not sure I can think any clearer now, but as her head settles against my belly, I manage to get out, "Gale?"

"Yeah," she says. "But it's not him anymore. Maybe it was, once, but now it's not. And it won't be again." There's a flat finality in her voice that stands in rough contrast to the loving activities we've spent the past hour or so engaged in.

I don't need her to explain any further, because I feel ashamed at the thought. Katniss has seen into me, the way I see into her. The insecurity, the resentment, the possessiveness. She has seen all of me through her haze, I think, stunned.

"Was all that because of pity?" I ask, made even more insecure by the thought that she was trying to prove something to me with her body. She laughs for the first time all day. "Did it feel like pity?" she asks me back, and I can hear the note of teasing that relaxes me. I pull her up beside me. "God, Katniss…"

She kisses me, and it's tender, not desperate. "In good time," she says. "Someone told me that once."

"I love you," I whisper.

"I love you, too," she says back, matter-of-factly, and then puts her hand on the top of my head and in a rare show of bossiness in the bedroom, shoves me downward. "Now, make me come," she demands, and I laugh.

In the morning, when I wake up, she's sitting on the side of the bed, wrapped in a sheet, bare feet dangling. In her hands is the opened letter from my pocket. I sit up and encircle her in my arms, resting my chin on her shoulder. "Are you okay?" I ask.

She nods and extends the letter to me wordlessly. I take it. It's short and written in the same bold hand as the address, and oddly formal.

Dear Katniss,

I hope all is well with you in the district. Please send my regards to Peeta, Haymitch, Delly and the rest. My mother is well, and the kids are settling in here. They love the variety in the food—I see what you meant about Capitol food.

That's telling, I think. Not everyone in the Capitol is eating that good, not nowadays. Gale's part of a special class, now. Ironic, in a way.

It continues:

They're going to school, actual school, learning about history and math and things, and there are some kids from the other districts who are teaching them so much. They told me to tell you hello. My mother has been able to get some much-needed rest here and is much healthier now than ever before.

I apologize for not writing sooner, but I thought perhaps it would be best if we took some time apart. I don't know if you'll ever be able to forgive me for my role in the events in the war, but I hope so. I hope you're finding peace. I miss your company. I can't remember the last time I saw a forest, and it's not the same, of course.

On behalf of the President and myself, I wanted to extend a request to you. We are hoping that you'll be able to come to the Capitol at your earliest convenience to reconnect with some of us, as well as be a part of a discussion on the continuous rebuilding that I'm sure you're aware of. The leadership team

Leadership team? I think, scornfully. He sounds full of himself sometimes now.

…has been hoping that the Mockingjay would greet her people and wish them luck in rebuilding, just to boost morale. We know the people are wondering where you have gone and it would give them great joy to hear from you again. Personally, I was hoping we could talk for a little while and catch up. If you do not want to see me, I understand, but I'm still asking on behalf of the others that you make time to come be a part of the effort you helped create. They asked me, too, to pass along their greetings and hope for your wellness in 12. Please respond as soon as you are able, and of course, you are free to bring anyone along that you wish, and all will have accommodations here for as long as you choose to stay.

Thank you,

Gale

I hand it back to her and she folds it neatly, opens up the bedside drawer, and places it inside. She closes the drawer again and stretches, linking her hands together above her head. The sheet tumbles down below her breasts and my hands slide up to them, cupping around them as I kiss her bare shoulder. "Sore?" I ask.

She turns her head and smiles at me, and it displays just a hint of sorrow, intermingled with the love. "Yep," she confirms. I brush her hair aside and kiss the back of her neck. "I'm sorry," I whisper.

"No you're not," she says.

"No I'm not," I confirm.

"What now?"

"Now you come back to bed," I tell her, and wordlessly, she settles back down into my arms, though we're both awake now. I wait for her to speak. She plays with my hands, drawing the long artist's fingers out one by one.

"You," she says finally, "Haymitch. And Johanna. I'm not going alone."

I nod against her hair so she can feel it.

"And not right now. I need to get ready for it…in my head." Her voice is unreadable.

"Alright. Whatever you need."

"Want." She corrects me.

"Want," I say.

"You," she says, and rolls over to face me. When she moves my hand up slowly and stretches her own hands over her head against the pillows, I pin them gently down. She nods and I move to kiss her jawline. I don't know whether everything will change because of this visit or not, and I'm not particularly looking forward to it…in fact, I'm still afraid for both of us…but I'm comforted, too. She has comforted me, because when I look in her eyes, now, after the letter, after the ghost of Gale, after almost three years, I finally see no one reflected back at me but me.